Jewish ancestry & the IQ of Nobel Prize winners

One of the most innovative ways to estimate the IQ’s of Nobel Prize winners (and other elite groups) has been to observe the percentage that are Jewish (or partly Jewish). Since high IQ is disproportionately common among Ashkenazi Americans, any achievement that selects for high IQ should also indirectly select for Jewish ancestry, so all else being equal, there’s some mathematical formula that allows ones to estimate a group’s average IQ from the degree of Jewish over-representation. Such calculations have been done by La Griffe du Lion and others.

La Griffe argued (if I understood him correctly), that since U.S. Nobel Prize winners and Americans with IQ’s of 139+, are both 27% Jewish, that the dumbest Nobel Prize winners has an IQ of 139, and from there he concluded that the average U.S. Nobel Prize winner has an IQ of 144. While an average IQ of 144 sounds plausible, La Griffe’s methodology made no sense to me because the IQ’s in a group (even a high achieving one) tend to be normally distributed, so I would expect a wide range of IQ’s rather than everyone bunched together above some ridiculously high threshold. So now would be a good time to revise his analysis with a radically different approach.

The correlation between IQ and Ashkenazi ancestry

Ashkenazi Jews are 2% of America and average IQ 113 while the average for all Americans is 100. If there were a perfect correlation between Ashkenazi ancestry and IQ, every single Ashkenazi American would be in the top 2% of IQ (130+) and thus the average Ashkenazi American would be in the top 1% (IQ 135). Since the average Ashkenazi American is not 35 points above the U.S. average, but rather 13 points above it, the correlation between Ashkenazi ancestry and IQ can be estimated by dividing 13 by 35, which gives 0.37. Of course this correlation falsely assumes that Ashkenazi ancestry is a normally distributed continuous variable that all Americans can be ranked on, when in reality it’s a discrete category that only a small minority fit into, but for our purposes, that probably doesn’t matter.

The correlation between g (general intelligence) and Ashkenazi ancestry

If Ashkenazi ancestry correlates 0.37 with IQ, and most IQ tests have a g loading around 0.85, then dividing 0.37 by 0.85 gives the g loading of Ashkenazi ancestry as 0.44. We should also correct for the fact that ethnic self-identification probably correlates about 0.9 with actual ancestry, so dividing 0.44 by 0.9 reveal the true g loading of Ashkenazi ancestry to be 0.49.

How Jewish are Nobel Prize winners?

According to this source, Jewish Americans are dramatically over-represented among U.S. Nobel Prize winners. They are 11% of Peace laureates, 27% in chemistry and literature, 38% in physics, 42% in physiology and medicine, and 53% in economics. Since only 2% of the general U.S. population is Jewish, these numbers imply that peace prize winners are 0.8 standard deviations (SD) more Jewish than average, chemistry and literature winners are +1.4 SD in Jewish ancestry, physics winners are +1.67 SD, physiology/medicine +1.8 SD, and economists are +2.07 SD

Estimating average IQ from average Jewish ancestry

In order to estimate the average IQ of the Nobel Prize winners, we must divide their degree of Jewish ancestry (expressed in SD units) by the g loading of true Jewish ancestry (0.49). We must then multiply the resulting Z score by 0.85 since that’s the g loading of a typical IQ test. After multiplying the Z score by 0.85, we multiply it by 15 and add 100 to convert to the IQ scale.

The smartest Nobel Prize winners are economists?

After doing the above calculations we get the following average IQ for Nobel Prize winners in different disciplines:

Economics: Average IQ 154

Physiology & Medicine: Average IQ 147

Physics: Average IQ 143

Chemistry: Average IQ 136

Literature: Average IQ 136

Peace: Average IQ 121

These numbers sound plausible. The only red flag is that physics laureates didn’t rank higher. I suspect that’s because Ashkenazi intelligence is verbally oriented, so using Ashkenazi ancestry as a proxy for IQ underestimates the ability of spatially oriented intellects. Had this analysis been done based on East Asian ancestry instead, physicists may have come out on top.

* The average IQ of white Americans is 100, but not the average IQ of all Americans.

* The last American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was black, not white, and hence comes from a group with a much lower average IQ than 100. By splitting up U.S. Nobel laureates into just two groups (Jews and non-Jewish whites) you miss some how these distinctions might impact your arithmetic reasoning.

* Selective immigration of highly talented foreigners has given the US credit for several Nobel laureates who were born, raised, and educated elsewhere. I suspect, without really looking at it too closely, that those overseas laureates were much more likely to be Jewish than non-Jewish, but that you could also find NE Asians and possibly others among them. I also suspect you didn’t take this into account.

There’s probably a lot of noise in the estimate caused by small sample size, cultural differences, and ethnically specific strengths and weaknesses (verbal IQ > spatial IQ), but I think averaging all the STEM winners together shows that Nobel Prize winning scientists have IQ’s around 145, and are a lot smarter than non-STEM Nobel Prize winners.

I also see several obvious problems with your methodology.
* Jews have not been a static population in the United States during the awarding of the Nobel Prize. They were more than double their current ratio of the overall U.S. population in 1940, for example.

If you average over the 20th century my numbers are probably close enough.

* The average IQ of white Americans is 100, but not the average IQ of all Americans.

There are two IQ scales used in modern intelligence research. One where 100 = the American mean, the other where 100 = the white mean. I was using the former scale, citing figures from Charles Murray

* The last American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was black, not white, and hence comes from a group with a much lower average IQ than 100. By splitting up U.S. Nobel laureates into just two groups (Jews and non-Jewish whites) you miss some how these distinctions might impact your arithmetic reasoning.

The two groups I divided them into were Jewish and gentile (with non-whites included in the latter). I was going to do a parallel analysis with black and non-black, or even forcing all ethnicities on to a single continuum, but the post was getting complicated enough.

But yes, averaging the estimates using different ethnic groups would improve the accuracy, since cultural factors and ethnic-specific talents would hopefully start to cancel out

* Selective immigration of highly talented foreigners has given the US credit for several Nobel laureates who were born, raised, and educated elsewhere. I suspect, without really looking at it too closely, that those overseas laureates were much more likely to be Jewish than non-Jewish, but that you could also find NE Asians and possibly others among them. I also suspect you didn’t take this into account.

But if immigrants increase the number of Jewish U.S. Nobel prize winners, they probably also increase the percentage of overall Americans who are Jewish, so the Jewish over-representation would probably be insignificantly affected.

“But if immigrants increase the number of Jewish U.S. Nobel prize winners, they probably also increase the percentage of overall Americans who are Jewish, so the Jewish over-representation would probably be insignificantly affected.”

I disagree. The U.S. immigration system was pretty hard for any Jew to get through from the mid-twenties to the mid-sixties. So I suspect that if you were a smart Jew with obviously special skills, you had a much easier time getting into America during that time than if you were just another Jewish immigrant.

But you’d have to look closely at the background of the Jewish winners like Otto Stern, Felix Bloch, Eugene Wigner, and Hans Bethe to know for sure. And those are just a few of the physicists. There are others in medicine.

Also, Jews with an IQ of 113 doesn’t sound plausible either. If that was the case, why are the young ones not dominating their East Asian and Indian counterparts academically? We have plenty of data from this past decade on Asian performance, but all the Jewish IQ information is based on data from previous generation, along with estimates mostly done on previous generations, where alot of the world was still stuck in poverty.

Let’s see how this current generation of Jews compared when the pipeline of East Asian and Indian scientists hit middle age. Given the markers for early success in NYC schools, Ivy League admissions, National Merit, Science competitions, etc just aren’t there, I expect we’ll revise Jewish IQ.

With a 113 IQ average, they should absolutely dominate Asian-Americans academically, similarly to how Asian-Americans dominate whites, especially given that there are more Jews than Chinese or Indians in the USA.

Flynn found that Chinese Americans in California did not score higher than whites but performed as if they did academically and occupationally.

Number of NE Asian American billionaires? Not many.

Jews aren’t doing as well because they don’t have to, duh. There’s much less motivation. Although just to show, like blacks, how culturally distinct they are, many of them still have a unique way of speaking. Not diction, not even accent. It’s hard to describe. Steven Pinker is an example. That’s not a Canadian accent.

As for self-made rich youth, I’m pretty sure we see plenty of Indian-Americans climb those ranks, as the rise of young Indian-American wealth has been covered in financial magazines. It’s no accident they’ve had political success and entrepreneurial success. Even Microsoft is run by an Indian-American now. East Asians don’t learn proper English until they’re past the optimal developmental age. I find their culture so drastically different, that I’m hesitant to make bold claims on their innate abilities outside of STEM. However it seems their non-STEM abilities is much closer to whites anyhow. I’ve seen Sailer track their improvement, but it’s hard to say how much of that is from their test cramming focus, demographic changes (eg. 2nd generation vs 1st, East Asian vs SouthEast Asian), rise out of poverty, or their insane and abusive parenting style.

Note that the black-white gap is 15 points by comparison. It’s not like whites are in need to do well either in comparison to blacks, yet the difference is obvious. We see impoverished whites still dominate all blacks until you get to blacks who’s parents make 80k-100k/yr. That’s how obvious a 15 point gap is.

A 13 point Jewish-white gap should be clear as day. It’s not about effort at that point. I live in a Jewish town, attended an Ivy, have dated Jews, gone to Bar Mitzvahs, and know plenty in my social circles, and the difference of intellect isn’t obvious at all. During college, Indians were clearly the smartest then the Chinese.

I took my share of writing classes, and even though there were few Asian-Americans as compared to STEM majors, they were clearly among the brightest. It was as clear as seeing the black and Hispanic students underperform. Were there brilliant Jewish students? Sure, but nothing like a 13 IQ gap. Where are the anecdotes to support that? I see Indians winning 7 Spelling Bees in a row. I see Chinese and Indians taking all the NYC high school spots. I see Asians in all the national Science competitions.

What I don’t see is anecdotes of Jewish excellence among the youth, highlighting anything close to a 13 point Jewish-white gap. The only place I see it is from previous generation success, along with logical thought exercises which are again based on previous generation success. When I think up observational exercises that should showcase a 13 point Jewish-white gap, I don’t see the results. However, when I think up an East Asian-white mathematical gap, I can observe it everywhere, from well collected data to everywhere experience.

A more interesting and useful exercise is what is the maximum IQ one can have to believe in a 113 Jewish IQ? There are so many ways to figure out how this isn’t possible.

Absolutely right in my own experience. It isn’t envy or anti-semitism. The Jews I’ve known in school and on the job are not especially impressive. They’re above average, but my God they’re INTENSE and ENERGETIC.

But in The Age of Science of course there will be no shortage of explanations of the class system with “science”. Psychology is a pseudo-science. It is as simple as that. But it does almost all the “scientific” work of Anglo-American ideology.

I knew one very smart Chinese American and another half Filipino in college. Other than that my impression fits the stereotype. They’re grinds whose verbal factor score isn’t that high. They lack subtlety.

Indians? I haven’t known any personally. BUT from mass media my OVERWHELMING impression is the same. Indian Americans are smarter in the verbal factor. But I doubt it’s genetic in the strong, dumbfuck sense. It’s prejudice, I guess, but I don’t think Jay Chandrasekhar could have been Chinese.

Japanese Americans as far as I can tell are totally indistinguishable from European Americans. That is, except in appearance. They’re totally assimilated.

And NE Asian Americans are less ambitious. Really. Good enough is good enough for them. Think postman.

“Flynn found that Chinese Americans in California did not score higher than whites but performed as if they did academically and occupationally.”

Flynn’s study looked at data that was at least a couple of decades old, and hence didn’t include any of the recent super-charged Asian immigrants. It also looked at Japanese Americans, as well as Chinese Americans.

“I knew one very smart Chinese American and another half Filipino in college. Other than that my impression fits the stereotype. They’re grinds whose verbal factor score isn’t that high. They lack subtlety.”

Well shoot, Dukester, it’s like you knew the whole continent of Asia with that sample.

And personal experience always carries more weight for the individual than second hand and hearsay. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe. But unfortunately life’s too short to navigate without prejudice. Life’s not like chess. The information is never enough to make the right decision.

Of course Ashkenazis dominate Indians and East Asians on the Forbes 400. We’re talking about people who have lived in 1st world nations for multiple generations, including the financial center of the world, and in the nation with the global reserve currency. Guess which group has lived under unprecedented generational wealth and capital, and which one was at the Malthusian limit? Let’s wait until the Chinese and Indians actually live in a 1st world country. Even today, China’s internet usage is at 42%, and India is at 13%. Have you been to their countries? They’re shitholes.

I’m supposed to judge immigrants from those countries equally with Ashkenazi’s? Asian immigrant parents are littered with 3rd world mindsets, who lack social polish or any sense of self-actualization. In fact, many of them are not even aware of those concepts. They’re unconsciously unaware. Yet, I still see their children leap far ahead of whites. Ray Charles can see the 6-7 point IQ gap between East Asians and whites. Jewish children have every advantage in society one could hope for, but now apparently their lack of success is due to their NAM-like work ethic from a spoiled upbringing? How conveniently for nurture to triumph over nature to heal bruised egos.

Go to a high school with an ample number of Jews and Indians or East Asians. Tell me what you see. Or consider how many Ashkenazi 17 year olds take the SATs annually. With a 113 IQ, how many perfect scores should we have?

Let’s say there’s 6 million Ashkenazis in the US, and roughly let’s say there are 120,000 Ash-Jewish 17 year olds. With a 113 IQ, approximately 1 in every 1200 should have a 160 IQ. 4SD+ minds should be able to get a perfect SAT score. So that means there should be 1000 perfect scores from Jewish students year.

Now unless you math geniuses can correct my Larry Summers-like ability to use math in relation to demographic analysis. How am I supposed to take something like a 113 Jewish IQ seriously? The fact that it’s not obvious to everyone, shows how obvious it isn’t true.

Grade school math will be my downfall, as I’ve already made mistakes. Likewise, Ashkenazis must be coming up short on the math portion, because there just aren’t that many perfect scores. IIRC only a few hundred score perfect.

Let’s say out of the 4 million U.S. 17 year olds per year, virtually all the gifted ones are academically ambitious enough to write the SAT, and only 200 per year score 1600.

Then 1600 is a one in 20,000 score (IQ 158)

Assuming an Ashkenazi mean of 113 and SD of 15, only one in 741 of the 80,000 Ashkenazi teens should score perfect, so about 108.

So roughly half of the 200 people scoring perfect every year should be Ashkenazi, unless the Ashkenazi SD is small, but I doubt that given that many of the smartest caucasoids of all time have been Ashkenazi.

It could also be that Ashkenazis are closer to 1% of the younger generation, in-which case only about a quarter of perfect scores should be Ashkenazi

“Let’s wait until the Chinese and Indians actually live in a 1st world country. Even today, China’s internet usage is at 42%, and India is at 13%. Have you been to their countries? They’re shitholes.”

I’ve never been to India, but I’ve lived in and been to much of East Asia, and most of the places from which the Chinese immigrate to the West from are not shitholes.

I would say that the major urban conglomerations in Greater China – Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, etc. are either as well-developed as your average city in the West or closing in on that mark fast.

The worst ones are usually in China. They’re crowded, polluted, often teeming with poor rural migrants, but also have excellent infrastructure that often surpasses anything you see in the U.S. Lists of the best airports in the world, for example, usually include several from East Asia and Greater China. They almost never include one in the U.S.

I’ve serious concerns about your methodology. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the average physics laureate had an IQ of 143. Let me explain. Intelligence is advantageous but, after a certain point, has diminishing returns. To use an extreme example, it takes a certain minimum intelligence (perhaps an IQ of 65?) to dig a ditch. Someone with an IQ of 85 could probably dig ditches better than someone with an IQ of 65. But can someone with an IQ of 150 dig a better ditch than someone with an IQ of 85? Probably not. After one reaches the minimum intelligence required to do a job the benefits of more intelligence start to drop off.

It doesn’t take an IQ of 160 to be good at math or chemistry. It doesn’t hurt. But, after a certain level of intelligence is reached, what it mostly takes is practice to master the material and dedication. Considering the shape of the bell curve, it should be obvious there are a lot more people in the fields with IQ of 130 than 160. Probably by a factor of 100 simply because there are so many more people with an IQ of 130. While those with 160 may still have an advantage on average there are so many more people with an IQ of 130 who could potentially make a great discovery that the gravity of the larger number of lower IQ persons will pull the average of the laureates down. Particularly when you consider being smarter doesn’t necessarily equate to other helpful qualities such as work ethic.

You’re right. Tasks that discriminate well between lower IQ levels might fail to load on g at high levels.

For example the Duke says he scores in the stratosphere on standardized college admission tests, but the smartest person I ever knew felt such tests were excellent measures of IQ below 140, but completely useless above 140. Even the old SAT which had a ceiling of IQ 171 could not discriminate above 140 according to this person:

I wouldn’t put too much stock in what the duck says. He spouted SAT scores at me when he first showed up on my blog. Not only were mine higher but I doubt his are what he claimed. I think it’s part of a clever scheme to discredit IQ by claiming a high score then convincing us that he’s a blithering idiot. He’s succeeded admirably.

Perhaps a higher IQ can make you more inventive about digging the ditch ? If it was just to follow orders, yes 160 probably has little advantage over 85. But what if the scorr of 160 helps you in finding better ways of digging the ditch ?

Verbal IQ is much more sensitive to formal education than non-verbal IQ but in culturally homogeneous societies like America where virtually everyone gets a lot of schooling and the degree of schooling might be highly correlated with genetic potential, this is a non-issue, unless you believe that being raised in a Jewish home is the equivalent of getting seven extra years of schooling.

I don’t know of any adoption studies…

So really, the “genetic” IQ of Askenazi Jews is less than that of NW Europeans and NE Asians.
Whatever. All of the Ashkenazi advantage can be explained by culture.

I’m open-minded to either genetic or environmental interpretation, but even the socially liberal New York Times aggressively promotes the genetic view:

What IQ tests are REALLY measuring is engagement with one’s environing society.

A man without the society of other men is not a man. He’s just a man-shaped beast, so to speak. This is another reason why conservatism/individualism/neo-liberalism/neoclassical economics is so patently ridiculous.

Wait could pumpkin mean that, say a Raven’s score would be heritable across cultures whereas, “Who was the second President of the US?” wouldn’t be?

Yes. If one identical twin were raised in America and speaks only English and the other was raised in Japan and speaks only Japanese, their scores will be much more similar on the Raven than on American Jeopardy

Every man has an environment. Every man has the society of other men. Every man has a culture.

Every Goddamn one.

Your comment is as stupid as saying that a man without a brain and a body is not a man.

Well, no shit. That’s because he’s dead, Sherlock.

What IQ tests measure is real, and the differences between groups and individuals have real, practicable, predictable consequences. They’re also cross-cultural. If you knew anything about other cultures, you’d know that.

But if you take a smart American who can memorize the U.S. presidents, he can also memorize the Chinese emperors if he so desires. Or the names of New Guinean birds or whatever else anyone chooses to throw his way.

Tarzan is just a literary invention, numbskull. Or were you raised by the apes yourself?

Mountain men disappear in the wilderness. Shipwreck victims are stranded on deserted islands. But even these men have society and culture, dumbass. Or do you think Robinson Crusoe ceased to be a man when he was on Más a Tierra?

Children have reportedly in rare instances gone feral and been adopted by other primates, but these reports are controversial and disputed.

How did jews invent a religion that today still effects our lives, produce sophisticated texts as torah, talmud and others if they would have average intelligence? They have a culture of learning, true, but why did they adopt that culture, and not other folks?

regarding whites, winning 1/2 the nobles is nothing to sneeze at, even with the larger population representation. I suspect Jews being overrepresented in nobels has more to to with their intelligence being better utilized than Jews being a brainier people. Many high-IQ whites decide to be hipsters and stuff like that rather than scientists and businessmen. Smart Jews have more social pressure to excel than whites.

Unz has made it clear that if Jewish achievement were due solely to their higher IQ, genetic or otherwise, they would be over-represented by 3x (6%) their numbers at elite American unis. Nisbett made a similar calculation.

Oh and Pinky: Steve Hsu described my comments as “insightful”, he ju’ go’ ma’ a’ me when I ma’ fun o’ de Chinee accen’. It takes smart to know smart! But Steve is also a racists and Chinese supremacist so I ma’ fun o’ dee Chinee an’ he hypocri’.

some of the best nobel physicist are jewish, I believe: Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, etc.
Therefore not every nobelist are equal, so maybe in that sense, it might improve the physicist score. However, in general the numbers seem too small to me. I mean, there cannot be millions of people smarter than science nobelists.

If there were a perfect correlation between IQ and academic success, then the average academic Nobel prize winner would have an IQ of 175 since it’s a one in a million achievement. But since the correlation between IQ and academic success is far from from perfect (0.6-0.7) their IQ’s can be expected to regress 30% to 40% to the mean.

Many of the greatest minds lack the work ethic or interest for academic pursuits or would rather pursue money and power.

I wouldn’t discount ancient explanations for Jewish accomplishment. Of course, today those are called “conspiracy theories” or anti-Semitism. Whatever. Gregory “Dumbfuck” Clark is wrong, people were just as smart in the Middle Ages as they are today.

As Chomsky has said, in the age of faith the class system was justified by God, in the age of science it’s justified by “science”. Unz has his piece on Hernstein. Jew on Jew violence, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

1. The number of generations is too many even accounting for endogamy for the status transmission to be genetic. Regression to the mean is a bitch.

2. There are NO such things as absolute psychological traits independent of the particular society. That is, even if a trait identified or at least named in one society even exists at all in another the genes which may influence its expression are very likely to be different from one society to another. An example: NE Asians in the US are known for their conscientiousness, lack of neuroticism, agreeableness, etc. BUT. When American personality tests are given in NE Asia, I’m thinking of a study from Taiwan in particular, what do you find? The EXACT opposite.

But this discussion is a purely empirical one. You don’t disagree that such SES stratification is due to differences in innate talent and ability? And as such, lineages with innately higher ability have held high status for that very reason throughout the ages? Frankly, there isn’t any counterargument that is as plausible as Clark’s hypothesis.

As for me. The way I think the world really works would take many blog posts not just comments, but I do believe there is some, though small, canalized portion of cognitive ability/intelligence. But I also believe that no work in behavior genetics has been done correctly so as to be dispositive. The question should never be “How smart is person A innately?” or “How smart am I innately?” but rather “What is person A’s potential given an environment which is best for him?”

I don’t see any legible arguments against Plomin’s arguments, based on wide ranging GCTA studies, that SES correlated with higher IQ & heritability of IQ. This is the biggest argument for society being a meritocracy where higher ability naturally takes one to the top strata of society.

Jews and white gentiles have similar intelligence level, but whites have more cognitive castes to serve to greater complex societies, aka, civilizations. Ashkenazim are very cognitively concentrated only in some cognitive castes. They tend to be and have more super-specialists than whites. Look to ashkenazim iq, 107 to 110 verbal iq, on average, and at least, less than 100 for spatial iq.
Ashkenazim don’t have higher iq than east asians and ”whites” (why whites, there absurd subracial diversity among them). Verbal iq 107 + spatial iq (at least, less than 100) is not higher than 104 iq for white native americans or 104 in Japan.
Ashkenazim have more traits derived from ”gifted personality”, higher energy, higher brain activity, greater capacity to see big picture and more ”memes deviant” behavior.

They have advantages in other traits like personality.

The greater difference today among ashkenazim and whites is because ashkenazim cognitive elite (and sociopathic) found, by its capacity to found big picture, the structures of civilization, the hierarchy, and take the control social epicenters.

To see big picture related to be practical wisdom, when you take all or the most important circunstance that influences directly the human societies.

Probably, ashkenazim have also more neuroplasticity. This could explain the modern blackout of jewish achievement in important intelectual competitions for teenagers.
Many jewish people can learn anything.

A way to build the idea of jewish super intelligence for white gentiles. Today, smart white gentiles legitimate jewish power in american society because they believe jews are super smart, but is not exactly the real true, not at all.

Nobels are very, very unequal because the few people who win, few intelectual fields (nobel to philosophy, to arts, no…) and because supremacy of most important universities.

Many smart people have very interesting ideas all the time around the world, specially in Europe and ethnically derived, but also in many other places. But, they are not in the right hour and in the right place.

Many surprisingly creative people don’t have ideal combination of personality and intelligence or cognitive traits to engage a long-term academic carrer.

Are many environmental variables to be conclude early ”jews are super smart because win more nobels”.

“The greater difference today among ashkenazim and whites is because ashkenazim cognitive elite (and sociopathic) found, by its capacity to found big picture, the structures of civilization, the hierarchy, and take the control social epicenters.”
Really? Then why didn’t ashkenazim create the first civilizations, earlier than the Sumerians, Egyptians, Assyrians, etc.? Not that they haven’t contributed greatly to the civilizations that they became a part of it. But, as it stands, they hardly have their own land, let alone a civilization that is distinctly theres. They have shone primarily in European societies, whose people they are (according to some) intellectually superior to. I am not saying that they are less intelligent than Europeans, but I doubt they are significantly more intelligent, if more intelligent at all. Nobel prizes? First of all, these are in fact subjective, since many researchers contribute to a discovery, while vanishingly few actually receive prizes (let alone Nobels) for them. Does anyone think that those who won were vastly more intelligent than those whom they worked with, directly or indirectly? Secondly, the reason why Jewish people may be overrepresented in top scientific research may be that they have not slacked off, compared to their European (and European American) counterparts. Europeans don’t even want to work more than 30 hours a week, which is crazy to workaholic Americans! Those who don’t want to work don’t tend to choose molecular biology or physics as fields, for god’s sake. So, there are more proportionally more Jews in science, and these guys probably work a bit harder than their Gentile counterparts. This isn’t to say that these Jewish Nobelists don’t deserve their honor. It just means that they’re not necessarily smarter than the physicist down the hall whose name is Bates or McGraw. There are just proportionally more Jews in science departments, because they hit the books as 15 year olds and didn’t waste whatever intelligence they had while their Gentile pals tooled around in the batting cage.

But Ashkenazis are partly descended from middle easterners who did create the first civilization. Ashkenazis are a fairly recent ethnic group. I’m not sure how far their existence dates back, but they probably haven’t been around long enough to have had much time to create a civilization.

Yes, i agree with you, but were my comment was different than your comment now?

Ashkenazim are differently intelligent because they take advantages of anomalous lateralization like sociopathy higher profile intelligence and Adhd. They have more smart and divergent free thinkers than whites or selecting more them.

Nobel are very unequal and elitist prize. As i said, education selected specific cognitive profiles related to hard working, ”consciousness” and low way of life.

But many intuitive people have great ideas all the time. The difference is many intuitive people have fast way of life or atemporal way of life (because right side brain activation or symmetric brain) and education meritocracy is build for low way of life or temporal-sequential-linear.

Nepotism also have great impact in jewish success like older anglo nepotism (possible nepotism).

Nobel prize, at end, is still a subjective evaluation of achievement. (It is corrupted by salesmanship exemplified by Jews, ideology, dishonesty, ethnicity, ect). Just looks out war chief of command Obama awarded with peace prize.

Take it with grain of salt.

My goal is creating award which is dependent on more objective evaluation without human subjective component. It is likely done through computer algorithm.

People place too much emphasis on Nobels as indices of great intelligence. No doubt, those who do win are very intelligent and, in most cases, deserve their honor. But most science today simply cannot be done without a large number of collaborators, often separated by thousands of miles and oceans. Yet for any given discovery, vanishingly few receive any award, let alone a Nobel. What about these? Are they any less smart or qualified than those who got the nod? There have been concerns that the Nobels favor Anglophone countries, partly because the wealth of America supports expensive research, but also because most major journals are in English and many researchers from non-English-speaking countries publish in more obscure outlets. It’s entirely plausible that those who don’t get the nod were from places like Russia or Hungary or Japan. In fact, there is a story that Richard Feynman discovered the work of Shin-itiro Tomonaga, who co-invented quantum electrodynamics (and with whom the great Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel, with Schwinger) while conducting a literature search, accidentally finding Tomonaga’s work in an obscure Japanese journal published during WWII. This was a while back, and no doubt such extremes are not common, but it does illustrate the fact that becoming known for things often has as much to do with whom you know, with chance, and/or you’re ability to propagate your findings (and yourself as the principal investigator) as it is to your ability as a scientist. One doesn’t need to take an international slant to see this: if you happened to have majored in science, particularly at a large American university, you likely will have heard of or been taught by someone whose peers thought should win a Nobel or Wolf or whatever. But in most cases, they don’t win anything, partly because of the relative infrequency of prizes, but also because a lot more than talent or accomplishment goes in to who gets the nod. The international/linguistic element just magnifies all this. As an example: the 1985 Nobel in Medicine went to Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein for work on statins and their role blocking cholesterol synthesis. But these two researchers were quoted by the Wall Street Journal, praising an obscure scientist, Akira Endo, for inventing statins: “The millions of people whose lives will be extended through statin therapy owe it all to Akira Endo,” according to Michael S. Brown and Joseph Goldstein, who won the Nobel Prize for related work on cholesterol.” Endo didn’t even make a penny off his innovation, despite the fact that statins are the top most-prescribed drug, making several companies billions for different variants. He is so obscure that, when he went in for a medical check-up in the early 2000s, his doctor told him that he had high cholesterol but not to worry: “We have drugs for that.” Little did this doc know that the man sitting on the exam table invented them!
Here’s another way to look at it: most Nobels go to American researchers. Does anyone really think that Americans are just smarter than, say, British or German or French or Japanese scientists? Especially since Germans and French used to dominate the Nobels? Russians have won just 2 dozen Nobels–are they somehow less intelligent than French or Swiss people, who are dwarfed by Russia’s population but have won many times more Nobels? Are Russian Jews less intelligent than British Jews? Politics, linguistics, access to education and research infrastructure are somehow discounted in these discussions, yet clearly play a major role.

Excellent points. I was going to do a worldwide ethnic analysis of Nobel Prize winners but I’m glad I limited my focus to America because of all the noise in international comparisons you brought to my attention. Even within America, luck probably plays a bigger role than people think, because as you point out, science is collaborative effort, yet often only one person ends up monopolizing the credit. It’s interesting that people are quick to point out the importance of luck in financial achievements like making billions of dollars, but academic achievements are somehow seen as 100% meritorious, but you’re absolutely right that being in the right place at the right time plays a large role in Nobel Prize winning.

So maybe, for everyone who wins (within America), there are a couple dozen equally deserving people who don’t. Still, the winners would be a random sample of this larger deserving population, so they should still be quite brilliant on average; just not as spectacularly brilliant as would be expected if the award were 100% merit based.

No idea what the proportion of Jews in Russia is, but hardly the proportion of Nobel Russian/Soviet prize winners. A quick count in Wikipedia gets at least 8 (outside litterature and peace) out of Dave´s just two dozen

The most verbal IQ oriented awards seems to be Medal Fields in Math and bank of sweden nobel prize in Economics and nobel in Physics (don’t think it is very spatial except for experimental physic).

If you consider that ashekenazi jewish are +13 IQ points above gentiles as you say – i thought it was more – (almost 1 SD), you only have to see at which point the +13 points IQ is equivalent to the ratio of jews in the total white population which is 1 in 100 (10 millions ashkenazi among 1 billion whites).

So as you have 96 askenazim out of 300 whites and 360 total recipients for the three prizes, ashkenazims are 33 times over-represented.

For these result, you’ve got a 151 IQ. This is the level wich would imply a overrepresentation of 33 times for people with an 13 points IQ average advantage. For economics alone , at the worldwide level, it’s 154, the highest one. Then comes math at 152 and Physics at 147.

One of the highest caliber thinker in the most g loaded field have an average IQ of 1 in 3000 thousand people. It really an indication of the validity of IQ on real intellectual work and at the same times of how the education system doesn’t attract the super-brainy because if you count white only, you’ve got each year 4 000 thousands kids who are above this average. So in the 80 years, you had 320 000 at this level, and we are speaking about only 300, and 150 at this level.

So if academia were so good as attracting the brightest as Basketball NBA, the average would be much much higher i suppose, i would say 1 in 50 000 to take into accound motivation, would be the normal average level, that is 161 IQ. So economy is almost there ….